


Inculpate

by DrJekyl



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Aesthetic AU, Alternate Universe - Fae, Dark, Dark Magic, Don't Judge Me, Fae & Fairies, glamour, haphazardly researched lore and history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 07:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11054109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrJekyl/pseuds/DrJekyl
Summary: Once upon a time, a fairytale ends.





	Inculpate

**Author's Note:**

> First of a few loosely (and sometimes tightly) linked shorts set in an AU where the gems are fae instead of sentient alien space rocks. The lore will be fleshed out as we go on, I expect. Just remember that no one ever said that elves are *nice*.

A young man, a young woman and a wedding.  

They’re poorer than dirt, maybe, but they’re certainly happy together.  All those in the village smile to see them walk, hand in hand, along the river, smiling, skipping stones.  Young love brings back fond memories.  Nostalgia for a simpler time, albeit one that never existed anywhere other than in their heads.

The young lovers wed in the spring amidst the apple blossoms.  They jump over the threshold of their new home together, still bound at the wrist.  And that’s where most re-tellings of most such stories end.  It’s better that they live on forever in a springtime afternoon, drunk on scrumpy cider and each other, than stay with them further.  A happy ending is too easily spoiled by the plain truth that love is never simple nor easy.  No human being is anything other than perfectly flawed.

Perhaps he drinks.  Perhaps she raises her hands or voice against him in anger.  Perhaps there’s an affair, and then another.  Perhaps one leaves, walks up into the hills one autumn night, never to return.  Perhaps a plague or the pox takes them both.  Perhaps he’s crippled by the plough or the axe, perhaps she’s blinded by the needle and candlelight, or broken by the churn.

Perhaps there’s just the mundane reality of dull work and grinding poverty.  Calloused hands and hard labor and getting by, getting on with it.  Simple pleasures and humble cruelties. An apple.  A kiss.  A fight.  A reconciliation.  Good intentions, kind hearts, and dreams of something better.  Love that fades to companionship, passion traded for comfort.

Or perhaps she’s pregnant before the leaves turn orange.  

Perhaps the story ends, not with a wedding beneath a bright blue sky, but as all humans do: in tears and grief.  

Perhaps it begins as humans do too: with screaming.

A young husband, a dead wife, and four sickly daughters, born a month too soon.

The village rallies around him, around them, of course.  The mason has a fine milking goat, the best in the whole county, and the slaughter of two kids frees it to nurse.  The carpenter works a full day and night to craft a rocking cradle fit for not one or two but _four_.  There are grieving grandparents who find some measure of solace in gummy smiles and the old routine of infancy, and two dozen aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings with a day’s way to share the load.  There’s food to eat, wood to burn, water drawn fresh from the well.  There’s work to do too, out in the fields and the woods and the hills - though never in the orchards. And there are always eyes watching, ensuring that there is always enough of everything, and that nothing is ever, ever _too_ much.

And, slowly, as slowly as the tiny babes grow closer to health, the news spreads.  Opportunity comes with it.

Twins, yes.  They rarely live through the birthing, but it's common enough that there's a pair in almost every village.  Triplets, maybe.  The old miller, down by the lake, remembers triplets, once, when he was a boy, and nobody has cause to doubt him too much when he’s sober.  Four, though, is unprecedented.  There’s not even a word for four.  It’s… _curious_.  And attracts those such.

The common-folk come first, from miles around, to see for themselves.  When they do, it’s only courtesy to bring a small gift, say, of an apple or a ham or a still-good rag, or the chance to purchase a sturdy iron knife for a single copper piece.  Tinkers and traders and the seasonal workers spread the news further afield than local gossip could manage, and when the girls are six months old and just starting to babble, their arrival begins to catch the attention of those in higher places.

A couple of the local lairds are nothing to get terribly excited about, though their gifts are finer, but the Baroness herself arrives one day in a whirlwind of men and women and horses.  She leaves with a cottage and a job awaiting a young man of good character, should he chance by with four weaned and walking daughters.

It’s only a day later that the _other_ Baroness arrives in a whirlwind.  She pays for the viewing with a small silver wand that glows without flame or heat.  They take it without thanks, and hide the rest of the children away.

A young man, four young daughters, and an unexpected bounty.

They’re all named for flowers, when the family is sure that they’ll live to use them, and not be stolen away in the night.  And by the time they’ve seen their fifth summer, the four have been seen by all those who care to do so, from drudge to Duke.  The novelty fades, the gifts slow and stop, the help trickles away.  But they are, at least, no longer poor.

The young man, a young man of good character, finds the press of memory in the village too much without such novelty, and takes his family, takes his unusual treasures more than thirty miles from home to take a knee before the Baroness.  He takes the Pound House on the edge of the castle town, a small cottage of stone and thatch, and takes down all that graced the walls before.  He takes a small wage too, in copper and salt, and in the leave to keep one in every five unmarked sheep he finds loose and wandering.  The Hayward jokes he’ll quickly have second flock of his own, and no-one to mind if they run as wild and free as his first.

The girls take to the change with some tears but overall little fuss.  At five they’re small and slender as whips, but bright and bright-eyed and quick-witted and never, ever lonely.  They squabble and sing and play as all children do, but also court the kinds of mischief one only can when one wears another’s face. They answer to any name, and pay no mind when the townsfolk cross themselves or touch iron when they forget and chatter away in their own private language outside of the Pound House walls.

And if they remember little of their earlier celebrity and fleeting brush with wealth, they remember well the lessons of their grandparents and aunts and uncles, of the midwives, the mason and the old, sodden miller.  There’s an old, thick nail in at least one pocket, and sometimes a horseshoe for luck or for throwing. They fight legendary battles with hazel sticks in the place of swords, and crown each other with twigs of rowan and all the pomp and ceremony that muddied feet and skinned elbows can bring to bear.  They always bar the shutters against the night, no matter the weather.  And they never once go with the beautiful strangers into the woods, no matter what magics or treasures or treats they’re promised.

It does them little good in the end.

The Pinder, his four daughters, and the most bitter winter in memory.

The girls are ten, perhaps, or possibly eleven, growing like weeds and with appetites to match, when She comes.  The night is still and frightfully clear, the moon lensed to an impossibly large and looming omen.  The pinfold chuff and bleat and stamp the ground nervously.  It’s the only sound for miles of silence, until another of the old, rotten trees shatters with a crack worse than thunder under the weight of its ice-ridden boughs.

Footsteps.  Soft as falling snow.

They’re asleep as the door swings open, inwards, beckoning, when the invitation is made.  When She crosses the threshold and finds nothing upon the walls, nothing buried beneath the earth to bar her way.  When She finds nothing between her and their bed save a man and an iron knife, once bought for the gift-price of a single copper.

Tumbled together like puppies beneath a mountain of blankets, they find find each other a far more effective shield against the frost than the fire.  When the temperature drops, and falls further still, they only burrow deeper.  Cluster closer.

The Queen, the Pinder and the knife strike a bargain by firelight.

Rousted from their slumber, dressed in their best and warmest and holding to each other tightly, the girls are ushered out the door and out into the night.  Sleep-addled and susceptible, they don’t realise what’s happening until their feet are upon the Path and it’s far too late to run, too cold for tears.  There’s not even time enough for a true moment of terror, just the briefest of tightening hands and burning inhalation before She smiles down upon them and Her beauty overwhelms them entirely.  When the Way closes behind them, they don't look back.

They will never know what their father wanted.

They will never know what She asked in return.

They will only ever know, each of them, that he must have received his wish in full, to scream like that.


End file.
